Some really old (still true?) news from 100 years ago

The final verse of "Deck the Halls", omitting all the "Fa-la-las", goes "Fast away the old year passes.  Hail the new, ye lads and lasses, Sing we joyous all together, heedless of the wind and weather!"

The coming week is already the new year.  I enjoy the mysteries by Lee Strauss about Ginger Gold set in the 1920s.  In her blog, Strauss comments:

Can you believe that the 1920s are now officially 100 years ago? My grandfather was born in “the twenties” but now I guess we can no longer generalize like that. A brand new generation of people are soon to be born in “the twenties”. Boy do I feel old!

Speaking of the 1920s…

Ginger Gold Mystery #12!

Ginger Gold allows me to live vicariously in the 1920s through her, and I'm so happy about that. The 12th book is coming in January 2020. 

I've been looking back at the 1920s with my newest program, "High Times in the Dry Times" about Prohibition here in Michigan.  It looks primarily at how our two year head-start and location led to our providing 75% of the smuggled alcohol.  (While preparing it I thought that amount sounded high, but, if anything, it may be a bit low.)  A frequent reaction is how much the 1920s sound like today.  My reporter persona looks back from the mid-30s, so I have to let the audience draw their own conclusions.

Take a look at January 3, 1920.  Unfortunately it isn't easily scanned as even the full page size is not the clearest at Historical Newspapers, but the front page of the Detroit Free Press is packed with deportation, murder, banned substances (in 1920 it was alcohol), racial problems, multi-million dollar robbery, a D.U.I. caused car crash, factory explosion, world news, and more, including, yes, the wind and weather.

I hope you have fun with living vicariously in the 1920s, but suspect you may have celebrated the arrival 2020 with something that was illegal back then. 

I'm sure 2020 will have a lot of similar problems, but let's hope it also gives us reason to "Hail the new, ye lads and lasses, Sing we joyous all together" since there's not a lot we can do about the wind and weather.

Blaisdell - Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Assassination of President Lincoln

Artist: Joseph Edward Baker, 1835 – 1914, c. 1865

National Portrait Gallery

This Tuesday, April 14, is the sesquicentennial of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  During the past few years I've been doing another blog, Michigan's "Fighting Fifth" Civil War Infantry, of Detroit newspaper articles about that particular regiment in the pace at which they were published.  Along the way I've repeatedly mentioned how the Detroit Free Press was a "Copperhead" newspaper, in opposition to Lincoln and the war.  Next week, starting on April 15, I will feature there the front page of the Free Press for April 15.  If anything shows the local reaction to the assassination, it does.

Today I want to take a step back to observe Lincoln in some of his final public speeches.  I'm grateful that Albert Blaisdell included mention of Lincoln's second inaugural speech in his brief story, showing how "With malice toward none, with charity for all..." fit in with the presidential style as the Civil War drew to a close.  There was nothing Civil about the War Between the States, especially Lincoln's assassination, but the little book of Stories of the Civil War takes the overly familiar speech and sets it in place like a photo in an album.  It shows how Lincoln's style developed from his mother's instruction in a pioneer cabin to that final inaugural address.  The story's final paragraph is not the first time I've heard the story, but definitely shows that album setting.

You may have noticed the battered condition of the book.  Even this story was dog-eared by its original owner, Florence Grace Tucker, who also liberally made use of the book's final pages for penciled school notes and even a message to a friend.  Earlier I featured this book in the story of "How a Boy Helped General McClellan."  I found the tattered volume tucked away at Hyde Brothers, a delightful used bookstore in Fort Wayne, years ago and treasure its many stories.  An edition can be found at Hathi Trust Digital Library, where you might enjoy the tenth chapter, "A Pen Picture of Abraham Lincoln."  It's not really a story, but impressions of Lincoln.

For information about the assassination, I recommend the March 2015 issue of Smithsonian magazine.  You might also want to digitally visit the museum, searching the collection for Lincoln assassination for images, videos, blogs, and a bit more.
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At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my normal monthly posting of a research project here.  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my monthly postings as often as I can manage it.    

There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I recommended it earlier and want to continue to do so.  Have fun discovering even more stories!